372 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



great deal more. Every man is somebody to himself; 

 but I have the good fortune, arid I am not dull in ap- 

 preciating it, of being somebody to myself and to Mrs 

 Grant too. I have been a good deal in luck in the number 

 and quality of the compliments paid me of late, but with 

 one or two exceptions I think I can trace you either 

 directly or indirectly in them all. First, my " Stanzas on 

 a Sun-dial " appeared in Chambers s Edinburgh Journal, 

 prefaced by a note, in which they are designated as 

 nervous and elegant, and the fact that the author should 

 be a working mason questioned. Next they appeared 

 in a Sussex paper, in which they are praised still more 

 highly, described, indeed, as " marked by a refinement 

 of thought, an elegance and propriety of language, that 

 would do honour to the most accomplished poet of the 

 day/' Where, think you, did they next appear ? In a 

 Newry paper, which was sent me by the editor, a man I 

 never before heard of. He is extravagant in his com- 

 mendations of the whole, and some of the lines he has 

 printed in italics, as peculiarly felicitous. The stanzas 

 then took the round for they seem to have pleased the 

 Irishes hugely of well-nigh half the Hibernian periodical 

 press. I was just recovering my modesty, which after 

 all these shocks was, as you may think, in a bad enough 

 state, when out came the second volume of Allan Cun- 

 ningham's Burns, with the compliment which you have 

 seen. To weigh against it, however, and keep me 

 humble, I find he has compressed my letter into half its 

 original bulk, and that more than half its brains have 

 been squeezed out in the operation. But still there is a 

 little sense left ; and the compliment is from Allan 

 Cunningham. And now, last of all, and worth all the 

 others put together, comes the letter of Mrs Grant. But 

 how, in sober fact, do I feel after all this? Grateful, I 



